PayTm Share Price: One97 Communications' stock fell, company's shares fell by 18%

Shares of fintech firm One97 Communications fell 18 per cent in mid-session trade on Thursday. A day later, the company announced it would focus on high-ticket lending and go slow on loans as low as Rs 50,000.

The company's stock fell 17.90 per cent to Rs 667.50 per share on NSE, while it fell 17.87 per cent to Rs 667.95 per share on BSE. During intra-day, Paytm shares reached the lower circuit of Rs 650.65 and Rs 650.45 per piece on BSE and NSE respectively.

Fall in shares:

• Meanwhile, the 30-share BSE Sensex was trading 101.45 points, or 0.15 per cent, lower at 69,552.28, while the NSE Nifty fell 25.80 points to 20,911.65.
• On Wednesday, One97 Communications, which operates under the Paytm brand, said it will focus on high-ticket lending and will go slow on loans below Rs 50,000.
• We are seeing better performance on the merchant side as compared to the consumer side.
• "We will try to do more there," Paytm President and Chief Operating Officer Bhavesh Gupta said in an analyst call on Wednesday.
• Now our focus is on calibration of the business, which is slowing down the pace below Rs 50,000. He said that postpaid loans will gradually start decreasing in the overall lending business.

Customers taking postpaid loans less than Rs 50,000:

• The company gets an average of 3.5 to 4 lakh new postpaid loan customers every month, of which about 70 per cent choose to borrow less than Rs 50,000. Gupta said that the growth rate of new postpaid customers may decline.
• He said Paytm is planning to onboard two more large non-banking financial services companies and one more bank for loan services in the next two quarters. Currently, Paytm has around 7 NBFC partners.